Baseline boss difficulty vs reward

It's counter-intuitive, but makes perfect sense in context of AoC.

Most rewarding world bosses can be mechanically most simple, since large portion of the challenge will come from other players. Those bosses just need to feel epic with huge AOEs.

It also works the other way. Most complex bosses can be given the least reward. This will make them least contested - perfect for those who primarily seek a great PvE experience.

This provides a nice content gradient form primarily PvE to primarily PvP, while being PvX all the way through.

Makes sense thematically as well - if there is 200 players around a huge dragon in the field - it's just going to breath fire at 50 of them, not really do some intricate mechanic. While some dungeon dwelling mystery monster can be all kinds of unexpected and complex.

Food for thought.

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Percimes

NiKr wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Seems to me that including PvE-Only gameplay would have made L2 even more successful than it already is.

Actually, it killed it They added instanced content, easier content, solo content - majority of players agree that this shit killed the game.

The players that would have enjoyed this type of content had probably already left. The ones remaining weren't interest in it in the first place.

It's rather hard to change the orientation of a MMO. Once people have tried it and decided it wasn't for them, they rarely look back at it. They simply move on.

Ludullu

Percimes wrote: »

The players that would have enjoyed this type of content had probably already left. The ones remaining weren't interest in it in the first place.

It's rather hard to change the orientation of a MMO. Once people have tried it and decided it wasn't for them, they rarely look back at it. They simply move on.

And this is why presenting your vision for the game correctly (especially in mmos) is important. Yet Steven has been vague as all hell. And with each new update to the dev process and year that we get closer to the release, if Intrepid don't start presenting the game in as much of an exact manner as possible - we might see a much bigger numbers fall than what we are already expecting.

I think Steven has realized this, which is why he keeps on saying "this game is not for everyone" and keeps mentioning how a ton of mechanics tie back, or are based on, pvp, so I do think we're on the right track here.

Raven016

NiKr wrote: »

Percimes wrote: »

The players that would have enjoyed this type of content had probably already left. The ones remaining weren't interest in it in the first place.

It's rather hard to change the orientation of a MMO. Once people have tried it and decided it wasn't for them, they rarely look back at it. They simply move on.

And this is why presenting your vision for the game correctly (and especially mmos) is important. Yet Steven has been vague as all hell. And with each new update to the dev process and year that we get closer to the release, if Intrepid don't start presenting the game in as much of an exact manner as possible - we might see a much bigger numbers fall than what we are already expecting.

I think Steven has realized this, which is why he keeps on saying "this game is not for everyone" and keep mentioning how a ton of mechanics tie back, or are based on, pvp, so I do think we're on the right track here.

I think the best advertising will come later, in the 2nd half of Alpha 2.

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

Showing players that something they did even 4 years ago still has a meaning to this day - very much shows respect for players time, what are you on about?

See, no.

You run content because you enjoy it, not for the rewards.

The meaning content has is that enjoyment, not the ring you get from it.

Thus, respecting players time is about making it so players don't need to go back to the same old content after 4 years.

L2 developers treat PvE content as a means to an end. It is something players will suffer through in order to get gear to be better at PvP. That is why they don't care if you still want something from a four year old encounter.

Good developers treat content as the goal, and gear as the means.

Now, one could argue that this is a PvE mindset - I'm nit really even going to argue against that. All I will say to it is that if a games only end goal is to be better at PvP, you have a PvP game.

Ludullu

Raven016 wrote: »

I think the best advertising will come later, in the 2nd half of Alpha 2.

Just as Percimes pointed out, people like to make a first impression and then forget about the game. And only the chosen few have been able to overcome that (NMS, FF14 are probably biggest examples).

Alpha2 will most likely be streamed by Asmon and all the other huge gaming streamers/YTers. So if Intrepid don't manage to properly present their final vision for what the game is supposed to be at the start of A2 - I'm not sure how many people will be willing to change their minds about it at release.

Obviously the release itself will capture a more casual gamer audience (not skill-casual, but news awareness casual), so there'll be a chance that we'll see a ton of players at that point, but the game is designed to be quite niche, so majority of those newcomers would simply leave after first month or two.

What Intrepid want is a super stable number of hardcore players who'll stick with the game because they like the core premise/vision. And then Ashes can garner new players through positive word of mouth (obviously given that the game is indeed good).

But if we see one version of the game at the start of A2 and then there's a whole different version of it by the end - this will not only anger those who've invested their money/time into the product, but could potentially lose anyone who was not interested in the early-A2 version on streams, but might've liked end-A2 version. Which is a double-edged sword of a mess on its own.

Either way, as always it all ties back to messaging and presentation. And imo that hasn't been the best quality of Intrepid so far (or at least of Steven as the face of Intrepid).

Percimes

Alpha 2 will broaden the exposure, for sure, but if I was to guess, I'd say it will be the beta that will cement the expectations of those who have followed along the development. And those who haven't paid a close attention will suddenly do. This will be the moment to capture the larger audience with the right amount of hype. "These are the features of the game, they may not be as polished as they'll get, but they're close to, and almost all there".

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

You run content because you enjoy it, not for the rewards.

Good developers treat content as the goal, and gear as the means.

Iirc you said you're ok with ow bosses in Ashes giving BiS gear, but you also said that you wouldn't play a game that doesn't reward you with gear that would let you beat the next iteration of that same content.

But if Ashes has the most difficult content in instances, while BiS is only available from ow bosses, wouldn't that mean that you'll need to beat non-instanced content to clear instanced content? Does this then mean that you won't play Ashes, even if its instanced content is incredible?

And I'm assuming here that the hardest pve content requires BiS gear, otherwise it's not the hardest, right?

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

You run content because you enjoy it, not for the rewards.

Good developers treat content as the goal, and gear as the means.

Iirc you said you're ok with ow bosses in Ashes giving BiS gear, but you also said that you wouldn't play a game that doesn't reward you with gear that would let you beat the next iteration of that same content.

But if Ashes has the most difficult content in instances, while BiS is only available from ow bosses, wouldn't that mean that you'll need to beat non-instanced content to clear instanced content? Does this then mean that you won't play Ashes, even if its instanced content is incredible?

And I'm assuming here that the hardest pve content requires BiS gear, otherwise it's not the hardest, right?

Using EQ2 as an example.

Instanced content had a full and proper progression. EQ2 also had open world contested encounters that provided the best rewards in the game.

The instanced content was tuned to not need contested gear to be able to beat it. It helped, but wasn't needed.

There were also occasional instanced raids added that were considered separate from the progression - kind of like additional content or side quests.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

The instanced content was tuned to not need contested gear to be able to beat it. It helped, but wasn't needed.

Wait wait wait. Are you saying that EQ2's hardest raids didn't require you to have BiS gear to clear them? Then how in the hell were they "hardest" then? And how much easier did they become if your entire raid did have full owBiS?

Doesn't this kinda destroy the whole point of "beating the hardest boss in the game"? Because it's only that hard cause you're underpowered.

If that is the case, then your argument against my "pvpers could just bring fewer people to the fight to make it harder" is absolutely moot. If you weren't farming the hardest bosses in the best gear - you were literally doing the same thing that elite pvpers do against zergs. Fighting against smth powerful, while you're not at full power yourself.

This is getting sillier and sillier

Dygz

Is contested gear the same thing as BiS gear?

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

Is contested gear the same thing as BiS gear?

"Best rewards in the game" implies that to me, cause Noaani values gear, for it is the means of consuming more content.

If that is not the case, then I'm definitely curious what the rewards were. If only instanced stuff gave gear, because instanced stuff was the only thing that required said gear - ok. I'm just trying to clear up a potential misunderstanding here.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

The instanced content was tuned to not need contested gear to be able to beat it. It helped, but wasn't needed.

Wait wait wait. Are you saying that EQ2's hardest raids didn't require you to have BiS gear to clear them? Then how in the hell were they "hardest" then? And how much easier did they become if your entire raid did have full owBiS?

Doesn't this kinda destroy the whole point of "beating the hardest boss in the game"? Because it's only that hard cause you're underpowered.

If that is the case, then your argument against my "pvpers could just bring fewer people to the fight to make it harder" is absolutely moot. If you weren't farming the hardest bosses in the best gear - you were literally doing the same thing that elite pvpers do against zergs. Fighting against smth powerful, while you're not at full power yourself.

This is getting sillier and sillier

This depends on how you look at it.

For the most part, when people in EQ2 talked abotu best in slot items (which was almost never, as the best item available was usually build dependent, and different builds were 100% viable), items from contested content were excluded.

The reason for this is simple - not all contested encounters were guaranteed to ever spawn - let alone drop the item you wanted.

In the time I played, there were contested encounters that we all knew to exist, had data mined the rewards from, but didn't spawn a single time on any server in the game.

There were other encounters that spawned but were never killed. You couldn't just go back to these encounters at the next content cycle, as these encounters were redesigned completely (and reitemized) for each expansion (well, for 3 or 4 expansions before they were retired)

Thus, there were many, many items made that players never actually saw.

The developers couldn't actually design content around players having this gear because it was perfectly viable that literally no one would have it.

As to the effect it would have on making content easier (which seems to be the point you are making) - not really. I mean, a little, but not really.

The items in question were perhaps 2 or 3 percent better over all (I'll get to this "over all" point in a bit) than instanced dropped items. There was one of these specific items dropped per contested encounter kill (there were also other items, but they were on par with instanced raid loot). They spawned about once a week, but weren't able to be killed every week.

As such, a guild wouldn't be expected to have more than 10 of these items at any given time even if they had their server on lockdown (the one guild killed every contested encounter that was killed).

So, 2 or 3 percent better over 10 slots, with players having 22 gear slots each, and 24 players in a raid. This means that a raid with 10 of these items would be about 0.059% better geared. Then when you factor in that only about 80% of a characters potential is from gear, the remaining 20% being from ability/spell upgrades, this means that a guild with 10 of these items is about 0.0472% better off.

Now, the way EQ2 did raids, they didn't usually get harder as time went on or anything like some other games. The only increased difficulty as an encounter got more drawn out was in relation to basic general chaos (this always devolve as time goes on). For the most part, killing an encounter 0.0472% earlier isn't going to make the difference between killing it or not killing it.

Now for the "over all" part that I said I'd get back to. Gear from contested encounters was often a lot more offensively focused than gear from instances. While it's easy to think "hah, so you kill it even faster than you say!", the thing to keep in mind is that you probably want survivability/duration more than outright offensive power on most top end encounters. As such, it wasn't unusual for people with these items to use them on trash mobs, on lesser boss encounters, and outside of raids, but then switch to a better suited item for boss encounters - whether that is an item that increases their heals, assists in mana replenishment, increases buff duration or just increases defensive stats.

I'm also going to focus on this specific point of your post for a second;

Are you saying that EQ2's hardest raids didn't require you to have BiS gear to clear them?

Think about this for a second.

If the best gear in the game comes from the hardest encounters in the game, how can the hardest encounters require the best gear?

These things are far more complex than you are probably assuming.

Edit to add - it is worth noting that after I left the game (several years after, from what I can tell), they altered the spawn on these mobs (note again that they were updated with completely new mechanics each content cycle). The altered spawn made it so that for the most part, 6 of them would spawn in any given week, rather than 1. They also made it so that they would usually spawn either 2 or 3 at a time - and within a 12 hour window - though the window itself was somewhat random. I can't really speak to this spawn mechanism, as I didn't play the game with it in place.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

Is contested gear the same thing as BiS gear?

Yes and no.

Contested gear is any item that drops from contested encounters.

However, while some gear that drops from contested encounters is best in slot, not all of it is.

morphwastaken

You know, i already wanted to say that it was not just a PvE mindset earlier. Now, after reading the long post - it's even more suspicious. Did you actually play any game with hard raid content, and do it yourself? Did you pull your weight? @Noaani

Dygz

NiKr wrote: »

"Best rewards in the game" implies that to me, cause Noaani values gear, for it is the means of consuming more content.

If that is not the case, then I'm definitely curious what the rewards were. If only instanced stuff gave gear, because instanced stuff was the only thing that required said gear - ok. I'm just trying to clear up a potential misunderstanding here.

BiS gear might be the best rewards in the game. I don't understand why that must mean it's contested.
Contested typically means PvP. (Other players can prevent you from completing/acquiring that content.)

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

You know, i already wanted to say that it was not just a PvE mindset earlier. Now, after reading the long post - it's even more suspicious. Did you actually play any game with hard raid content, and do it yourself? Did you pull your weight? Noaani

Yes.

Most of my MMO experience has been in running top end raid guilds, though i did spend a few years playing Archeage as well (a game with effectively no raid content).

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

"Best rewards in the game" implies that to me, cause Noaani values gear, for it is the means of consuming more content.

If that is not the case, then I'm definitely curious what the rewards were. If only instanced stuff gave gear, because instanced stuff was the only thing that required said gear - ok. I'm just trying to clear up a potential misunderstanding here.

BiS gear might be the best rewards in the game. I don't understand why that must mean it's contested.
Contested typically means PvP. (Other players can prevent you from completing/acquiring that content.)

The main reason is rarity.

Even if PvP is not involved, a contested encounter can only be killed once per spawn cye on any given server, meaning only one roll on the loot table.

An instanced encounter can be killed many times on a given server by different guilds.

Thus, if the encounters are the same difficulty, it stands to reason that the contested encounter have better drops.

morphwastaken

Noaani wrote: »

Most of my MMO experience has been in running top end raid guilds

In which games? Give some examples of hardest raids you've done.

Ludullu

morphwastaken wrote: »

In which games? Give some examples of hardest raids you've done.

morphwastaken

I'm just getting a feeling of hardcore projection, rather than reality of a situation.
I would call such person a "reddit expert" in a different community. Idk if it's true, but that's how i feel.

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